Diller: ‘Broadcasters obnoxious’

By Colin Mann

Barry Diller, the main backer of Internet TV streaming service Aereo, has described the tactics of the US broadcasters in the US Supreme Court copyright case as “obnoxious” and warned that stopping the service was stopping technology.

“Aereo has been criticised as a gimmick, as a way of avoiding copyright rules. In fact, it was built to comply with copyright law and I’m really tired of being accused of stealing anyone else’s programming when we’re not, and I’d never be part of any service that was doing so,” he said on the earnings conference call of his media company, IAC/InterActiveCorp. “We are no more stealing programming than the person who puts up an antenna to receive the signals he’s entitled to receive. Kind of obnoxious for broadcasters to take away the signals they promised the public that they could receive directly, simply because they want to squeeze every dollar they can from consumers. Think if the 30-year-old Supreme Court ruling on video recording, went in reverse, abolishing video recording, what the world would have been like? Stop Aereo and you stop technology.”